Transport policy and health inequalities: a health impact assessment of Edinburgh's transport policy

Health impact assessment (HIA) can be used to examine the relationships between inequalities and health. This HIA of Edinburgh's transport policy demonstrates how HIA can examine how different transport policies can affect different population groupings to varying degrees. In this case, Edinburgh's economy is based on tourism, financial services and Government bodies. These need a good transport infrastructure, which maintains a vibrant city centre. A transport policy that promotes walking, cycling and public transport supports this and is also good for health. The HIA suggested that greater spend on public transport and supporting sustainable modes of transport was beneficial to health, and offered scope to reduce inequalities. This message was understood by the City Council and influenced the development of the city's transport and land-use strategies. The paper discusses how HIA can influence public policy

EU Cohesion policy 2007-13 and the implications for Spain : who gets what, when and how?

The recent negotiation of the EU budget and the associated reform of EU Cohesion policy have had major policy implications for Spain, the country in receipt of most Cohesion policy support in the current programming period (2000-06). EU enlargement, combined with relatively rapid growth in Spain, impacted on the eligibility of Spanish regions for Cohesion support while also taking the country as a whole beyond the eligibility threshold for the Cohesion Fund. As a result, based on the original Commission budget proposals of February 2004, Spain was facing a reduced Cohesion policy budget of at least a half (to below €30 billion). This paper first reviews the budget negotiations from a Spanish (Cohesion policy) perspective, identifying the key negotiating goals and the extent to which they were achieved. It then looks at the outcome of the negotiations for Spain, initially at the national level and then in the regions. It highlights the significant differential impacts of the cutbacks in Cohesion policy allocations at the regional level and the pressures on the Spanish government to modulate the regional impact of the budgetary changes. Having considered the direct funding implications of the new Cohesion policy, the second half of the paper is concerned with the regulatory, institutional and economic impacts of the new policy regime. Many of the reform proposals fit with Spanish priorities, not least the new rationale for Cohesion policy (with its stress on the Lisbon and Gothenburg agendas) and the new policy architecture (with all regions eligible for some form of support and with a related shift from a geographic to more of a thematic focus). The retention of the key Structural Funds principles has also been welcomed in Spain, unsurprising given the wealth of experience and expertise built up over three (high-spending) programming cycles. As in most Member States, the main regulatory concern relates to the extent to which a more simplified and devolved approach to Funds' implementation will be achieved in practice. As regards policy and institutional impacts, the paper brings together regional views on the new budgetary and regulatory frameworks and reviews how the new regulations are being implemented in practice. A discussion of the developing National Strategic Reference Framework and the related Operational Programmes makes clear that the strong emphasis on the Lisbon agenda is not viewed as a constraint in Spain; rather, it is felt to fit well with recent Spanish developments and goals. Finally, the paper considers the economic implications of the reductions in Cohesion policy support. On the basis of evaluation studies, it highlights the positive impact the Funds have had in the past and the potentially quite varied regional impacts the reductions in funding may have in the future

Duality cascades and duality walls

We recast the phenomenon of duality cascades in terms of the Cartan matrix associated to the quiver gauge theories appearing in the cascade. In this language, Seiberg dualities for the different gauge factors correspond to Weyl reflections. We argue that the UV behavior of different duality cascades depends markedly on whether the Cartan matrix is affine ADE or not. In particular, we find examples of duality cascades that can't be continued after a finite energy scale, reaching a "duality wall", in terminology due to M. Strassler. For these duality cascades, we suggest the existence of a UV completion in terms of a little string theory.Comment: harvmac, 24 pages, 4 figures. v2: references added. v3: reference adde

Distinct Modes Of Aged Soil Carbon Export In A Large Tropical Lake Basin Identified Using Bulk And Compound-Specific Radiocarbon Analyses Of Fluvial And Lacustrine Sediment

The 14C content of sedimentary organic matter (OM) and specific organic molecules provide valuable information on the source and age of OM stored in sediments, but these data are limited for tropical fluvial and lake sediments. We analyzed 14C in bulk OM, palmitic acid (C16), and long-chain n-alkanoic acids (C24, C26, and C28), within fluvial and lake sediments in the catchment of Lake Izabal, a large tectonic lake basin in Guatemala. We combined these measurements with bulk and compound-specific δ13C measurements, as well as sediment organic carbon to nitrogen (OC:N) ratios, to understand the source and age of sedimentary OM in different regions of the lake catchment. Most fatty acid and bulk OM samples were characterized by pre-modern carbon, indicating important input of aged carbon with residence times of hundreds to thousands of years into sediments. We identified two mechanisms leading to aged carbon export to sediments. In the high-relief and deforested Polochic catchment, older OM and fatty acids are associated with low % total organic carbon (TOC) and low OC:N, indicating aged OM associated with eroded mineral soil. In the smaller, low-relief, and largely forested Oscuro catchment, old OM and fatty acids are associated with high %TOC and high OC:N ratios, indicating export of undegraded aged plant biomass from swamp peat. The age of bulk OM and fatty acids in Lake Izabal sediments is similar to the ages observed in fluvial sediments, implying that fluvial input of aged soil carbon makes an important contribution to lake sediment carbon reservoirs in this large tropical lake

The Influence of Straw Application Rates, Plowing Dates, and Nitrogen Applications on Yield and Chemical Composition of Sugarbeets

Fertilizer N applied at ever-increasing rates sometimes accumulates in the soil. The practice of fertilizing grain straw with N to stimulate decomposition is questionable, but decomposition of straw immobilizes N that must be compensated for in fertilizing the succeeding crop. Too much N decreases the sucrose content of sugarbeets and decreases sucrose recovery. Experiments were conducted to determine the relative value of early and late straw applications, plowing with N applied in the fall or spring, and the amount of N needed to compensate for straw applications in obtaining optimum beet and sucrose yields with maximum quality. Sugarbeets (Beta vulgaris L.) were grown following winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L., var. 'Nugaines') in 1970 and 1971 on a Portneuf silt loam soil near Kimberly, Idaho. Straw was applied to the beet plots at rates of 6.7, and 13.4 metric tons/ha, and the plots were plowed either in early September or mid-November. Nitrogen was applied at 67 kg N/ha in the fall and at 67 and 134 kg N/ha in the spring. The treatments were arranged in a split-split lot design with 4 replications. Control plots were used with all experiments. N fertilization increased beet, top, and sucrose yields, as well as amino N, Na, K concentrations, and impurity index. It decreased the sucrose percentages of the beets. Straw applications decreased beet, top, and sucrose yields, Na and amino N concentrations, and impurity index, but they did not influence K content of the beets. Early plowing increased sucrose percentage and yield and decreased Na, K, and impurity index. Interactions between straw applications and plowing dates were significant for sugarbeet and beet top yields. Approximately 7.5 kg N fertilizer per metric ton of straw were required to compensate for the deleterious effects of the straw

Wheat Straw Management and Nitrogen Fertilizer Requirements

Straw and other crop residues may be an asset or a liability to the farmer depending upon how they are managed If plant residues and straw are not managed properly, they may reduce water infiltration when layered at the plow sole, clog tillage implements and cause damage to crops during cultivation. Proper management of straw and other crop residues can maximize the benefits and minimize the disadvantages. This publication summarizes several years of research at Kimberly on straw management and nitrogen requirements of crops grown in association with straw residue

Nitrogen Fertilization and Overirrigation of Spring and Winter Wheat

When fall or spring wheat is irrigated early in the spring before the available soil moisture is depleted, the yellowing that frequently results is a symptom of reduced crop vigor. Robins and Domingo (1) observed no benefit from irrigating spring wheat before the boot stage unless severe moisture stress developed. They also found that reductions in early vegetative growth and plant height that resulted from drought greatly reduced susceptibility to lodging during and following later irrigations. Although irrigation may be necessary for emergence under extreme drought conditions, Salter and Goode (2) found that water applied before emergence reduced grain yield. They concluded that water stress during the shooting and earing stages of growth, when development of the reproductive organs is taking place, would cause the greatest yield loss

Massive IIA flux compactifications and U-dualities

We attempt to find a rigorous formulation for the massive type IIA orientifold compactifications of string theory introduced in hep-th/0505160. An approximate double T-duality converts this background into IIA string theory on a twisted torus, but various arguments indicate that the back reaction of the orientifold on this geometry is large. In particular, an AdS calculation of the entropy suggests a scaling appropriate for N M2-branes, in a certain limit of the compactification, though not the one studied in hep-th/0505160. The M-theory lift of this specific regime is not 4 dimensional. We suggest that the generic limit of the background corresponds to a situation analogous to F-theory, where the string coupling is small in some regions of a compact geometry, and large in others, so that neither a long wavelength 11D SUGRA expansion, nor a world sheet expansion exists for these compactifications. We end with a speculation on the nature of the generic compactification.Comment: JHEP3 LaTeX - 34 pages - 3 figures; v2: Added references; v3: mistake in entropy scaling corrected, major changes in conclusions; v4: changed claims about original DeWolfe et al. setup, JHEP versio

Heterotic phase transitions and singularities of the gauge dyonic string

Heterotic strings on $R^6 \times K3$ generically appear to undergo some interesting new phase transition at that value of the string coupling for which the one of the six-dimensional gauge field kinetic energies changes sign. An exception is the $E_8 \times E_8$ string with equal instanton numbers in the two $E_8$'s, which admits a heterotic/heterotic self-duality. In this paper, we generalize the dyonic string solution of the six-dimensional heterotic string to include non-trivial gauge field configurations corresponding to self-dual Yang-Mills instantons in the four transverse dimensions. We find that vacua which undergo a phase transition always admit a string solution exhibiting a naked singularity, whereas for vacua admitting a self-duality the solution is always regular. When there is a phase transition, there exists a choice of instanton numbers for which the dyonic string is tensionless and quasi-anti-self-dual at that critical value of the coupling. For an infinite subset of the other choices of instanton number, the string will also be tensionless, but all at larger values of the coupling.Comment: Latex, 10 pages. Minor corrections, and extended discussion of singularities and phase transition

Supersymmetric Unification Without Low Energy Supersymmetry And Signatures for Fine-Tuning at the LHC

The cosmological constant problem is a failure of naturalness and suggests that a fine-tuning mechanism is at work, which may also address the hierarchy problem. An example -- supported by Weinberg's successful prediction of the cosmological constant -- is the potentially vast landscape of vacua in string theory, where the existence of galaxies and atoms is promoted to a vacuum selection criterion. Then, low energy SUSY becomes unnecessary, and supersymmetry -- if present in the fundamental theory -- can be broken near the unification scale. All the scalars of the supersymmetric standard model become ultraheavy, except for a single finely tuned Higgs. Yet, the fermions of the supersymmetric standard model can remain light, protected by chiral symmetry, and account for the successful unification of gauge couplings. This framework removes all the difficulties of the SSM: the absence of a light Higgs and sparticles, dimension five proton decay, SUSY flavor and CP problems, and the cosmological gravitino and moduli problems. High-scale SUSY breaking raises the mass of the light Higgs to about 120-150 GeV. The gluino is strikingly long lived, and a measurement of its lifetime can determine the ultraheavy scalar mass scale. Measuring the four Yukawa couplings of the Higgs to the gauginos and higgsinos precisely tests for high-scale SUSY. These ideas, if confirmed, will demonstrate that supersymmetry is present but irrelevant for the hierarchy problem -- just as it has been irrelevant for the cosmological constant problem -- strongly suggesting the existence of a fine-tuning mechanism in nature.Comment: Typos and equations fixed, references adde